A cryptic comment from Xi Jinping is making waves

This week, Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke with American executives on Wednesday in a bid to short up confidence in the economy. He said that his country was “healthy and sustainable” and listened carefully to concerns from the leaders of Blackstone, FedEx, Qualcomm and others.

Worries about the Chinese economy have eased recently but are still top-of-mind to most in the global investment world.

That’s what a newly-published comment from an October speech from Xi this week could be notable.

“The People’s Bank of China must slowly increase the trading of treasury
bonds in its open market operations,” Xi told a major financial meeting
in October in a speech that was not published at the time but was
included in a book.

It’s not uncommon for comments from Xi to be published well-after the fact.

The comments could be a hint at some kind of QE from the central bank. It set off a swirl of speculation after it was highlighted yesterday in the South China Morning Post.

Notably, the SCMP isn’t a state-run paper, so I wouldn’t weight it as heavily as something that appeared in the China Securities Journal, for example.

Still, the SCMP followed up with another article today that again highlighted the comment, while managing expectations about what it could mean.

“It requires the money supply to be more precise and rational. The
central bank’s resumption of trading treasury bonds will be more
cautious, taking into account expectations of inflation and impact on
foreign exchange rates,” Huatai Securities said in a research note on
Thursday cited by the SCMP.

Overall, it sounds like a small growth-positive signal that could supplement liquidity-enhancing measures. The Shanghai Composite rose 1.0% today.

Another spot to watch is whether the PBOC cuts the RRR rate in April, especially after this comment.